Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin is a historical novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and originally published in 1852.

The novel tells the story of Uncle Tom, a good and kind slave who belongs to a kind master. However, his master has financial problems and is forced to sell Tom.

Tom is sold down the river. He is bought first by the kindly St. Clare of New Orleans, whose daughter Eva befriends him, and after their deaths by Simon Legree, on whose Louisiana plantation he is worked and finally beaten to death for refusing to betray two women who have escaped. A second strand follows Eliza, who runs north across the ice of the Ohio to keep her child out of the hands of the same trader.

The novel did more than any other book to turn Northern opinion against slavery in the decade before the Civil War. It has also been criticized ever since for the meekness of its title character, whose name ended up being used as an insult.

"Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P——, in Kentucky. There were no servants present, and the gentlemen, with chairs closely approaching, seemed to be discussing some subject with great earnestness."